Sarah Josepha Hale Essay - Critical Essays

(Born Sarah Josepha Buell) American journalist, biographer, novelist, short story writer, and poet.

Author of one of the most famous children's poems ever written ("Mary Had a Little Lamb"), Hale fell into obscurity after her death and for most of the twentieth century. Her authorship of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was both challenged and forgotten, and her other work was mostly ignored until feminist scholars rediscovered her in the 1990s. Recent critics have viewed Hale as a writer and editor who had a great deal of influence in the nineteenth century, and her opinions on the role of women, the slavery question, and morality have undergone serious study.

Biographical Information

Hale was born on a farm in Newport, New Hampshire, the daughter of Gordon and Martha Buell. She was educated at home, at first by her mother and later by her brother Horatio, who tutored her in the courses he was studying at Dartmouth College. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four she taught school in Newport, giving up that profession when she married David Hale, a lawyer, in 1813. Her husband continued her education, studying history, French, and botany with her, and also encouraging her to write. She published a few poems and stories during this time but only turned to writing seriously after her husband died suddenly in 1822, leaving her with five children to support. In the next year, she published poems and stories in a variety of magazines and also completed her first book, The Genius of Oblivion and Other Original Poems (1823). After the publication of her novel Northwood (1827), she was offered the editorship of the new Ladies' Magazine, beginning a fifty-year career as an editor. In 1837 the Ladies' Magazine merged with Louis Godey's Lady's Book, and Hale became editor of the new publication, a post she held until 1877. In her role as editor, Hale contributed editorials, columns, and book reviews to the two publications. She also continued to write fiction and poetry, and published cookbooks, etiquette manuals, and her monumental Woman's Record (1853), a collection of biographies of notable women from the time of Eve until the mid-nineteenth century. Her most popular work was "Mary Had a Little Lamb," originally called "Mary's Lamb" (1830); it was frequently reprinted during her lifetime, though

often without crediting her as the author. Two years before her death, her authorship of the poem was questioned by Mary Sawyer Tyler, who claimed to be the original Mary and who said a classmate of hers had written the verses. In the 1920s, Tyler's claim won the support of Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer, but there has never been any evidence for it, and modern scholars agree that the poem was indeed written by Hale.

Major Works

Hale wrote a large number of works in a wide variety of genres, including novels, short stories, poems, plays, biographies, cookbooks, etiquette manuals, and journalistic contributions to the two magazines that she edited. Despite exploring these different genres, Hale's basic aim remained the same throughout her writings: to give advice and moral guidance. Even "Mary Had a Little Lamb" ends with a moral about being loving and kind to animals, and her novels and short stories tend to be didactic vehicles for her views on social issues and life in general. For instance, her novel Northwood promotes the New England virtues of hard work and domesticity as opposed to the supposed idleness and undisciplined leisure of the American South. Her novel Liberia (1853) advocates the emigration of slaves to Africa as a solution to the slavery problem. Her short story "The Catholic Convert," originally published as "The Unknown" (1830) asserts the shortcomings of celibacy and convent life, as opposed to marriage. In providing this sort of advice, Hale was acting in accordance with her philosophy as presented in Woman's Record: that it is the role of women to provide moral and spiritual leadership. Hale believed that although men were superior to women physically, women were superior morally, and it was women's duty to provide guidance to men and to refine men's "brute" natures. She maintained that it was also specifically women's duty to Christianize the world, for she saw Christ and the Christian virtues of meekness, mercy, purity, and charity as being essentially feminine. Hale was a believer in the doctrine of separate spheres for men and women; men were to engage in industry, business, and politics, while women were to be teachers, writers, and mothers.

Critical Reception

In her own day, Hale was known primarily as an editor who campaigned for women's rights—especially a woman's right to be educated—and for other causes, such as the institution of a national Thanksgiving Day holiday. After her death, she fell into obscurity, but in recent years has been the subject of several studies, mostly by feminists seeking to establish her relation to feminism. Even in her own day, though, this relationship was seen as complicated; Hale campaigned for certain women's rights but opposed the vote for women and the notion that women should seek to do "men's work." As a result, a women's rights society stated after her death that Hale "mingled … the spirit of progress with true conservatism." Some later critics have portrayed Hale as militantly feminist and antislavery, while others have seen her as anti-feminist and sympathetic to slavery (because she preferred emigration to abolition as a solution to slavery). Although one modern commentator has described her as a liberal in conservative clothing, it is clear that Hale does not easily fit into conventional categories.

[In the following excerpt, Finley surveys Hale's writings, discussing her style, her attitudes, and her subject matter.]

Of the many poems written by Sarah Hale only a few are remembered. These few, however, have become part and parcel of American ballad tradition, so much so that scarcely any one ever asks the name of the author. What modern stops to wonder who wrote "If Ever I See," "Our Father in Heaven," "It Snows," "Mary Had a Little Lamb"?—even though for the past few years the authorship of the last named verses has been figuring...

(The entire section is 4653 words.)

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[In the following excerpt, Finley discusses the controversy surrounding Hale's authorship of the poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb."]

"Mary Had a Little Lamb," the most famous children's poem in the English language, was first printed in 1830. It was signed by Sarah Hale. Now Mrs. Hale's authorship of the first half of the poem has been challenged by Mr. Henry Ford, who has given credence to an old claim first made public in the late eighteen-seventies by a Mrs. Mary Sawyer Tyler. Mrs. Tyler asserted that she was the "Mary" of the poem,...

(The entire section is 8543 words.)

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SOURCE: "Point Counterpoint" in Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character, George Braziller, 1961, pp. 122-41.

[In the following excerpt, Taylor discusses Hale's views regarding the ideal American character and the contrast between North and South as exhibited in her short stories and her novel Northwood.]

The Yankee Ethos in Limbo

The very fact of the novel [Northwood] is a puzzle. What had made a busy and hard-pressed widow living in a small provincial town sit down in the winter of 1826 and fill page after page with the story of Sidney Romilly? Why should she have concerned herself, as she did, with the South?...

[In the following excerpt, Baym discusses Hale's views on the moral superiority of women as expressed in Woman's Record.]

We know Sarah J. Hale as the editor, for almost half a century (1837-77), of Godey's Lady's Book. In that position she exercised considerable power (or, to use a word she would have preferred, influence) over emergent middle-class culture in the United States.1 Dedicated above all to the cause of women's education, Hale approached social issues with strongly expressed convictions that authorize the...

[In the following excerpt, Baym discusses the political nature of Hale's writings and describes a shift she sees in them from an interest in general political issues to an emphasis on women's role in society.]

Sarah Josepha Hale, author of poems, stories, sketches, a play, novels, and several home reference books, is remembered chiefly for her lengthy tenure (1837-77) as editor of Godey's Lady's Book, the most widely read women's magazine of its day. Using her position year after year to advance the doctrine of separate spheres...

[In the following excerpt, Okker examines Hale's views on women's poetry as reflected in her editing of Godey's Lady's Book and Ladies' Magazine.]

No doubt in part because of her authorship of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," Sarah Josepha Hale—editor first of the Ladies' Magazine and then for forty-one years of Godey's Lady's Book—is often described in the context of … [what Allison Bulsterbaum has called] "mawkish, moralistic poetry"...

[In the following excerpt, Ryan discusses Hale's position, expressed in her novel Liberia, that the only way to solve the slavery problem was for the slaves to return to Africa.]

To many white Americans before the Civil War, the idea of "returning" free blacks and manumitted slaves to Africa sounded like the perfect solution to the United States' increasingly rancorous and violent racial problems. Generally thought a moderate position in its day—compared to radical abolitionist and pro-slavery...

SOURCE: "Sarah J. Hale, Selective Promoter of Her Sex" in A Living of Words: American Women in Print Culture, edited by Susan Albertine, University of Tennessee Press, 1995, pp. 18-34.

[In the following excerpt, Bardes and Gossett explore Hale's views on women's roles, especially as reflected in her Woman's Record.]

Interpretations of Hale's life and career have varied widely, depending largely upon the period and upon the interpreter's attitude toward powerful women. Yet as we survey Hale's works, the most consistent element, the invariable factor whether one considers Hale radical or conventional in her activities, is her dedication to the promotion of her own sex....

[In the following excerpt, Okker discusses what she sees as a shift in Hale's writings from a belief in the Enlightenment notion of equality between the sexes to the Victorian notion of separate spheres of endeavor for men and women.]

Hale's writings during these early years [of her career] show little sign that she would eventually promote absolute notions of sexual difference and the idea of gendered separate spheres. Hale's...

Although Hale did contribute to the successful careers of writers like [Edgar Allan] Poe, [Lydia] Sigourney, and [Harriet Beecher] Stowe, she did not encourage all writers. In fact, she often used her editorial pages to discuss the difficulties associated with professional literary careers. While clearly discouraging to some would-be writers, Hale's editorials about authorship may...

[In the following excerpt. Griffin focuses on the Protestant-Catholic conflict in Hale's story "The Catholic Convert."]

In "The Romance of Travelling," one of the sketches collected in Sarah Josepha Hale's 1835 Traits of American Life, Hale focuses on Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, as a typical American landscape, which "gives to the heart a sensation like that of suddenly meeting the smiling face of a friend" (195). Hale follows the landscape tradition of focussing on the reflective and imaginative qualities...